Students create scare with MySpace account

Saturday

Oct 27, 2007 at 12:01 AMOct 27, 2007 at 8:58 AM

School alerted to site promising 'scandal'; no criminal charges filed

Jacqueline Koch

Police and school officials have identified the Farmington High School students involved in the creation of a MySpace page that aroused concern and prompted a police presence at the high school Friday.

The students created a page on the popular social-networking site and requested other students to accept them as "friends." A user is alerted to a friend request through a notification on the site.

Students who accepted the request inquired about the identity of the creator, to which the creators sent messages saying they would explain everything later, probably this weekend, Farmington Police Chief Jim Arrington said. Arrington said he thought four students were involved.

The students said they planned to release gossip about classmates.

"They were going to release some sort … of scandal," Arrington said.

The school was notified of the page after those students accepting friend requests noticed other "friends" were freshmen at the high school.

Farmington School District 265 Superintendent Mark Doan declined to specify how the school became aware of the page.

Arrington said no criminal activity occurred, and police met with the students involved and their parents Friday morning.

"It wasn’t a threat to anybody," Arrington said, adding that the police department got involved to help the district determine those involved and field calls from parents. "(School officials) couldn’t figure out who this was, and the rest of it was rumors."

Police said MySpace provided information about the user which helped locate an IP address. Arrington said the address was from a private residence.

Police officers were present at the high school Friday.

"The school is safe. Our kids are safe," Doan said. "We took proactive measures (Friday)."

Doan said the nature of the messages could have been interpreted in different ways. He said callers to the school wondered whether classes should be canceled or if the school was overreacting.

"The one thing at this point is, in this day and age, you can’t take things like this lightly," he said.

He declined to say if or how the students involved would be disciplined.

Doan said hype about the incident spread because people shared information that didn’t necessarily contain facts.

"We really didn’t have a lot of information until after some intensive investigations," he said. "As far as the school’s concerned, the case is closed."

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